


Pixie Sized

by Sevent



Series: Geraskier Halloween prompts [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (As in the animal is injured), Animal Injuries, Exhausted Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Magic, Pixies, Saovine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27257980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevent/pseuds/Sevent
Summary: Escaping a mob, Geralt and Jaskier run into a haunted magical wood. Everything goes alright for them, that is until Geralt angers the wood's little magical denizens. They take their revenge the best way they know how: shrinking magic.Jaskier is tired.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Geraskier Halloween prompts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967734
Comments: 44
Kudos: 310





	Pixie Sized

**Author's Note:**

> This is written for Geraskier Halloween! The trope/prompt combination: **woods** \+ **misuse of magic**.
> 
> (Fanfics in this series are posted chronologically out of order.)

Many unexpected things have happened in Jaskier’s life since meeting one Geralt of Rivia. Miraculous things. Wondrous things. Sometimes things hinging on the ridiculous. 

But for all the dangerous and life threatening moments that undercut their time together, he would never take their fateful meeting back. Not for anything. The good in Geralt far outweighs the bad that dogs his footsteps.

Jaskier is trying very hard to remember the good as scent hounds keep chase and gain speed. A murmur of angry voices approaches with them. 

A few paces ahead runs Geralt himself. In the dark, his white hair is what guides the bard’s path like a ghostly lantern—through stumbled steps and interrupted eyesight. He must know it too as he noticeably slows every time Jaskier starts to lag behind.

“Jaskier, run faster.”

“I’m— _pff.”_ A shadowed branch smacks him in the face and he sputters, “I’m going as fast as I can!”

The ground then dips into a river, narrow but waist deep. It’s dark waters churn downstream with hazardous speed. Geralt, witcher that he is, jumps it cleanly without a huff of trouble. But Jaskier, though he sees the river in time, second-guesses himself, his hesitant two-stepping making him slip with a yelp. He nearly falls off the river’s edge right then and there.

“Jump the water!” the witcher shouts at him in urgency. The murmur of the mob grows louder the more seconds pass.

Jaskier takes a couple of steps back from the high edge. “Everything’s covered in moss! What if I fall?”

Someone signals in their direction, far too close for comfort. They don’t have the time to spare for a different route. 

“I’ll catch you! Just jump!”

One of the hounds scurries out of the bushes and fear propels him forward. He jumps the gap, slips just like he’d predicted.

Geralt catches him. 

In the next instant, they’re both on solid, sturdy ground again, sprinting farther into the woods. They keep running even as the howling of hounds fades to the crowing of carrion, a dozen beady eyes watching from the conifer tree tops. 

A minute more of less hurried jogging and Jaskier comes to a full stop, panting for breath. His feet are killing him. One of the many branches in their path must have cut his lip. He tastes a salty drop of copper from the side of his mouth—blood. He hopes it’s just his lip that’s been scratched up, otherwise he’ll have to think up a valiant story for the new scar. 

Geralt doesn’t look that affected himself. That is, besides the angry twist of his mouth. 

It was supposed to have been a happy night of lazing about, a night to stuff themselves full of baked nuts and spiced beers. That’s how one spends the Saovine holiday best, celebrating the year’s last harvest with one last feast in the company of many.

There's sweet pickings. There's mask carving. There's drinks aplenty to buy and share around. Most infamously, the eldest folk like to tell fright tales around bonfires and scare the children into doing their chores. Makes for some absolutely wonderful—and life-scarring—memories.

It is also the night all manner of spirits rear up from beyond the grave. The best time for a witcher to make coin by killing the spawning of wraiths, and just in time before the first snow falls and all witchers return to their remote keeps.

Geralt must be livid. Not so much for the coin owed to him for taking care of the nekkers harassing the merchant paths leading in and out of the countess’s lands, or for the second heavy pouch of copper miss on for clearing two graveyards of malignant spirits. But because, having been chased by a literal pack of hounds with no time to think, they were forced to leave Roach behind.

In Jaskier’s defense, he’s not the one who got them chased out of the village. That is all actually Geralt’s doing, having pissed off the alderman and his kin—a proud pack of men short of fuse and poor of judgement. The bard is just the one who upset the countess, directly, by sleeping with her son. Not his best indulgent decision, truth be told. He can admit to that. And then the herds chasing them out of the countess’s lands combined into one formidable mob comprised of confused peasants and huffing knights. 

By now, there’s no danger of being caught and put on the rack. Though when morning comes, they’ll have to sneak back to fetch dear Roach, who is probably munching on some hay, unknowing _and_ uncaring of their predicament as a stableboy brushes her free of dirt and dried nekker blood. 

Good for her, Jaskier thinks. _Someone_ ought to have a good Saovine night.

After their little breather, Geralt and his beacon hair take them across a derelict bridge, Jaskier nearly tripping on a web of vines he barely sees through the sparse moonlight. 

On the other side stands a dark wood, thick with trees as dark as onyx stone. The branches tangle with one another, covering what little light shines from the waning moon. 

“Let’s go through,” Geralt says casually before that nightmarish wood, “The bridge is abandoned. No one will come through here. It’ll be safer.”

Jaskier is not comforted by its safety. 

One blessing in disguise is that they won’t be chased by a hoard of bastard nekkers, since Geralt took care of them earlier in the day. But these woods are ominous. Even he, who isn’t very versed in reading magic signs, feels the weight of a thick unnatural fog settle around them. 

He shivers.

Geralt’s head no longer stands out from the shadows. 

It’s a little longer into their trek—with Jaskier practically glued to Geralt’s hip to keep him in his sight—before they become well and truly lost. He knows it the moment the witcher stops to look up with a familiar searching expression. He does it every time he attempts to figure out where and when he is, and right before he’s about to spew some bullshit lie about everything being in order.

Jaskier sighs. “Right. Just our luck to run out of one trouble and into another. How are we supposed to get out of here?”

Yellow eyes fall on him, one eyebrow raised high. He can just about _hear_ the sarcasm in that stare. 

“I don’t know, Jaskier. It’s a dark wood forest in the middle of harvest night. I’m sure we’ll be fine as long as we don’t disturb any stacked stones.”

Stone piles stacked on Saovine are an old fright tale. Pixies love shiny stones, so goes the story. They like to stack them one over the other, see how high they can make them without the stack collapsing. Disturb a stack, and the pixies will get angry, turn you into a toad—or a squirrel, depending on who tells the tale. 

No matter the version, the end is always the same. They stuff your mouth full of stones and drop you in a pond to drown in.

Jaskier knows Geralt doesn’t believe in fright tales, so he rolls his eyes. “I’ll laugh if a gaggle of pixies shows up.”

“They won’t,” the witcher says with an upward quirk of his lip. “Come on.”

Without their trusty, disgruntled steed, the walk in search of shelter goes slower. Something tells the bard that going faster through these woods would be courting danger though, so he gladly keeps a careful pace, no matter how much the witcher grumbles for him to hurry. Jaskier is of the opinion that it’s better to be safe than sorry. 

It must be an hour past, or something like it, walking around in the dark wood with little guiding light, and still they’ve found no good place to sleep. A lot of the ground is uneven earth, snarled roots, and loose stone. After the chase, and with his protesting aches, Jaskier would rather they just pick a tree, climb it, and take turns sleeping, with him preferably first to shut his eyes to the world. 

He’s about to suggest as much when he spots a pile of curiously stacked stones ahead of them. 

He stops. 

That is definitely not a natural formation.

“Geralt,” he calls, gesturing at the stack. 

His warning signs go ignored as Geralt focuses on the moon peeking through the thick canopy of the trees. “Not now. I’m thinking.”

“Well I’m saying we need to be careful. Call me paranoid, but something’s in these woods with us. I know it. And—watch the ground!” the bard calls quickly as his travelling partner keeps going forward, still not looking down to the ground floor. “Could be there’s...traps, or something. For game or, or bears.”

“Traps,” is repeated back at him with skeptical emphasis. “Jaskier, I don’t need your help watching for traps. Just follow my lead.” 

He’s got a rebuttal on the tip of his tongue, but a pale hand shoots out to stop him from walking side by side, and it dies in his throat. 

“Step where I step.”

“Yeah, alright,” Jaskier sniffs, eyes down and watching his own steps instead. Typical of Geralt to shove him back so he’s not so much of a mouthy bother.

Sure, in a more reasonable mindset Jaskier would be able to understand it is so he doesn’t get hurt by one of those supposed bear traps. He is only human, and very danger-prone. Surprisingly so, considering Geralt’s own incident streaks. 

The bad dogs his footsteps, Jaskier has to remember. Geralt is just being overly cautious—and coming off harsh when his intentions are good. He does that sometimes.

It still stings a bit. He doesn’t get why they can’t at least walk forward together, or have him lead the way, as Geralt seems distracted by his star searching.

They cross the ominous stone stack without disturbing it, a small mercy. But, then another, more delicate looking stack rears up directly in their path and Geralt _still_ is not checking where he’s walking. 

Jaskier halts his progression, close enough to really study the stone pile without risking a touch. 

He blinks, takes a second to say, “It’s—are those precious stones?”

“What—?”

And then Geralt’s foot connects with the glimmering gems. 

It falls over, scattering the sapphires that were arranged skillfully at the top. They have to be the bluest rocks he’s ever seen in his life. And it’s not just sapphire—jade, lapis and turquoise glimmer among the freshly-tumbled pile. The rest he is no better at discerning—a lot of them he wouldn’t be able to name in a jeweler's shop. That they could put a dent in rich pockets is obvious.

Whatever scathing remark he had ready on his lips for Geralt's next gruff shrivels up.

 _“Our stones! Our stones!”_ A chorus of high voices erupts from beyond a fallen tree. _“He’s tipped them! Kicked them! Trampled our stones!”_

“Oh,” the witcher mumbles in surprise.

Jaskier screams.

The tall grass that surrounds them shifts side to side, parting for a—well, _a gaggle of pixies._ Five, from what he can tell, all with pointed heads and toes that curl at the ends. 

_“It’s a witcher,”_ the shortest one of the gaggle hisses out. 

_“A witcher! A witchman! See his shiny eyes! He’s gone and made rubble of our stones!”_

“It’s—” Jaskier wipes his eyes furiously, but the pixies don’t disappear. “Geralt, it’s pixies.”

He’d said he’d laugh if pixies came out to show up Geralt, but all he can muster is an anxious giggle that cuts off into a nervous cough. 

“It’s pixies,” he wheezes this time, pivoting around in a circle frantically looking for more hiding in the grass.

They’re about to die. Gods, Jaskier thinks, they’re going to die because his idiot witcher of a friend went and kicked a magic creature’s rock.

Said idiot stands calm over the destruction he’s caused. “It’s alright,” he has the audacity to say to him. “Fright tales always exaggerate. I’ve never met a pixie being, but from what I recall reading, they’re not as dangerous as the old tales make them out to be.” 

They’re mostly harmless little creatures with a knack for mischief and magic transformation, he argues. _Mostly harmless,_ so of course when they throw a glittery fireball at the witcher, Jaskier _mostly_ doesn’t scream again. 

He gives up the brave act when Geralt stumbles to the ground.

“Geralt!” 

Jaskier hurries over to his side, coughing through a cloud of shimmering air. He can’t see well through it to check Geralt over. Can’t really see _anything_ over where the witcher supposedly fell. There’s just an odd depression in the ground, nothing and no one standing over it. 

His heart plummets at what the pixies might have done.

“What—where is—”

Before he can muster up the anger and fool stupidity to squabble with a bunch of snickering little devils for having obliterated his best friend, a squeaky grunt sounds from the ground, a bit away where the grass grows taller.

Jaskier blinks. It sounds suspiciously Geralt-like.

“Geralt...?”

He has to crouch pretty low and part the long stalks to spot a wiggling little ragdoll getting up on its feet.

Scratch that, it’s _not_ a ragdoll. Not by the tiny swords fixed on its back, the flexible fan of white hair, _and_ by the fact that it moves on its own.

“Oh, Geralt,” Jaskier whispers, crestfallen.

The pixies didn’t turn him into a toad, but the technicality matters little. His fears have been made real. Little yellow eyes glare at him from a height just above ankles.

The witcher’s gone and shrunk to pixie size himself, along with all his things. 

Speaking of the little devils, they’re having a rowdy time pointing and huffing humorously at their spell’s work. It ought to be terrifying, knowing how their stories end, but that’s all they’re doing. Laughing. Like pranksters after performing a successful stunt. 

It helps to take away from the tremendous weight lobbed in Jaskier’s throat. They’re pranksters. They’re just pranksters with ageless pranks. Maybe Geralt’s right. If he wasn’t afraid of them— _isn’t_ yet afraid of them, despite what’s just been done to his body—then Jaskier shouldn’t be.

“Not a word,” the witcher says, but it comes off a little high-pitched on account of his shrunken vocal cords. Jaskier just barely refrains from chuckling at the sound of him—he looks to be unharmed, but he’s also _really_ pissed off now, and laughing wouldn’t ease his budding rage.

“What was that you said about pixies and exaggeration?” the bard can’t help but goad, seeing as the witcher got himself into this situation _precisely_ for ignoring his warnings. 

“I said _not a word.”_

“Alright, alright, uh.” Carefully, Jaskier cups his hands together and lowers them on the earth. Geralt is so small that Jaskier half fears he’ll accidentally crush him on his heels. It’s not safe for him to be down on ground level.

When Geralt hesitates to step on, he tries a gentler, “Come on, please?”

The danger of his size must register with him then, because the second he moves back, he trips—on a _pebble_ —and gets caught in a single blade of grass. 

That convinces him to follow along with Jaskier’s wish. 

Once he feels a good grip on his fingers, Jaskier stands, slow as molasses. As a second precaution, he tucks the witcher close to his chest, so he doesn’t fall from a newfound deadly height.

By then the pixies have stopped their snickering, choosing instead to congratulate each other’s brilliant vengeful decision to shrink their stone offender. 

_“Well done, well done, we say. The witcher will learn his lesson now.”_

Neither of them is sure what that ‘lesson’ is exactly, or why it is such a grave offense to disturb a stack of stones, but Jaskier for one isn’t yet ready to fight with a bunch of magical creatures on how their own worldly rules work. They found the disturbance offensive, and if turning people into frogs and squirrels is the usual go-to punishment, then he’s glad they didn’t do that with Geralt. 

“I think you should apologize to the pixies,” Jaskier helpfully suggests of the frowning witcher. “It’s only right.”

An option not well received, going by the displeased hum that vibrates between his fingers. Inevitably though, after some quiet grumbling, Geralt agrees that making amends and apologizing is the most reasonable course of action if he wants to be reverted back to his grand height.

“Fine. Hey, you five,” Geralt shouts over to the snickering group of magical critters busy rearranging their stones. They quiet immediately. “I’m...I’m sorry I stepped in your stack.”

It is not at all an effective 'sorry'. It's not even a believable one. Still, to hear him admit it is a great deal. Jaskier is shocked into silence above him.

_“Apologies! We hear apologies. But the witcher is still very rude.”_

The five pixies converge on each other as if discussing a secret matter of high importance, even though he and Geralt are standing only a few feet away and can hear the details of the discussion just fine. 

The magical little critters split up soon afterwards to clap their hands against their hips. The pose makes them look rather silly. This whole _thing_ is silly, now that he thinks about it.

_“Apologies are not enough.”_

He feels more than sees Geralt cross his arms over his thumbs. “What do you want.” 

“Geralt,” he scolds. Arguing is really not about to help his case. “I’m sure the pixies can undo your...little spell...for appropriate reparations.”

Three of the pixies jump and echo each other like a well-coordinated band of singers. _“Yes! The human is right. The human is right!”_ Then, they crowd their heads together again, and this time Jaskier can’t pick out what they whisper about. Maybe Geralt can, with his superhuman hearing, but—no, he’s scrunching his face with effort, no better than him. It looks like being shrunk has messed with his better senses.

Jaskier presses him closer to his chest in worry, which pulls a tiny squeak out of the little witcher. “Sorry. I just—you’re very small. As tall as my hand! I don’t mean to crush you.”

“Then keep your grip loose.”

“Alright, but you better not try and wiggle out of it! I don’t care if my palms become sweaty and uncomfortably hot. I’m not about to accidentally drop you.”

One hand clasps around the witcher’s middle while the other keeps a steady flat position for Geralt to stand on. It’s not ideal, but better than leaving him hanging limp from his hands like a child’s doll. 

The change is immediately appreciated. Geralt squeezes his thumb and leaves his arm hooked over it. A reassuring thing to see. He’ll be safe so long as he stays balanced like that.

It’s reassuring only for a moment, as a wave of dismay washes over Jaskier’s head, all humor draining from him. Geralt is so defenseless in his hands, so breakable. He knows that the witcher isn’t invincible, despite going through great lengths to make himself out to be someone who doesn’t need anyone’s help. But as he is now, a wrong _step_ could kill him. Any manner of woodland creature could snatch him up and eat him. And what if the pixies don’t care to reverse their spell? Then he’ll be stuck like this for who knows how long.

Jaskier frets, the fingers of one hand picking around the skin of a thumb. The nervous tick doesn’t escape the shrunken witcher’s notice as it jostles him, but he doesn’t shout his complaint.

The pixies separate. One of them moves to stand on another of its kind’s shoulders. That one’s voice is deeper than the rest. 

_“Yes, yes we’ve decided. The witcher must fix our houses.”_

Jaskier shares a confused look with Geralt, something barely interpreted on his tiny face. “‘Houses’?”

 _“Yes! Yes! Houses!”_ Unassembled from their bodied stacking, they hop and skip through the grass, shouting, _“Follow us, witcher and friend!”_

Small though they are, the pixies move quickly through the forest floor, fast as hummingbirds in flight. Jaskier is forced to jog after them, and it’s only by their shouts to follow that he can track them at all. He hates to think what they’d be capable of if they meant to do them true harm.

“Can’t I just fix the stack?” Geralt chirps from the safety of Jaskier’s cupped palms.

Somehow the pixies overhear him. They cry, _“No! No! Fix a stack? No! And how? You’re not a pixie, you cannot!”_

“Well _hf_ , I suppose they’ve got a point,” Jaskier tells him with a breathless wobble as he cannot stop the light run or he’ll lose the pixies. “You’re still your old witcher self, right?”

“Yeah. Everything’s distorted, but I am.”

“Let’s see what they mean by ‘fix our houses’, _hoof.”_

After all their previous running from a mob, his legs are _not_ enjoying the little midnight jog. He would have _loved_ to be the one carried about as easily as a handful of feathers. Though, he’s not sure if it would have been worth the pixies’ ire.

Soon enough, they come upon a big, snarled tree, in an open and grassless part of the woods. Birdhouses—or wooden boxes carved in their imitation—hang from between the low branches of the dark wood tree. Some appear to have been busted in. Large holes marr many wood facades, but not to the comfort of pixies, Jaskier thinks. They look as if drilled in by woodpeckers.

_“Nasty little animals, they want our precious stones!”_

“Ah, you store them here?” the bard asks with genuine curiosity. 

_“No! No! We find them during the day, then take them out for good stacking at night. But the creatures are smart. They have learned where we keep our stones for the day, and break into our houses at dusk!”_

Inside his hands, he feels a knock, like a tiny foot against his middle finger. Jaskier opens his palm to face the sky. Geralt emerges, huffing for air as if winded. Oh, he might have cupped his hands a little too tightly again.

“Sorry...” 

Geralt grumbles too low for Jaskier to make out his words. The little witcher is just rubbing his face, so he thinks it’s alright. If he’d been truly upset, he would have made a bigger fuss. 

Looking over the tree more closely, the bard starts to frown. There’s about a dozen stone stacks all around the great tree. “Um. Do you rebuild them every night?”

_“That’s right, that’s right. Build them up at dusk, break them down ‘fore dawn.”_

“Seems...awful having to rebuild your stacks all the time.” At least he thinks it must be awful, but the pixies don’t seem to share in the feeling at all.

_“Yes, yes, busy day and night, is a pixie’s life, but it must be done! The shiny stones must be shown off.”_

“I see.”

He doesn’t, but who is he to question what sentient magical creatures do in their free time, or even what they’ve accepted as normal habit? They have other things to stress over. Like their houses being broken into. 

_“Fix, witcher! Fix and we will judge how well it is done!”_

Jaskier takes a deep breath. Calling the tree ‘big’ is an understatement. A man the size of his hand will have trouble getting up high to where the little houses are, hanging from questionable vines. 

A few Jaskier can reach himself, if he stands on his tiptoes, something he consults with the stern-faced witcher. They agree it would be too dangerous for him to climb alone, so standing on Jaskier’s hand will have to do for him to check the low-hanging pixie houses.

Balancing on the balls of his feet tests his poor trembling muscles. A quick inspection is all Geralt needs, fortunately, for him to get an idea.

“Break some branches there, off of the shorter trees. Make sure they’re thin, I’ll snap them down to the right size.”

“Alright, as you say.”

After gathering a good pile of branches, they crouch under the great wood tree and get to breaking them into even smaller pieces. Then, at Geralt’s request, he tears a handful of long grass out of the ground. He doubts the witcher would be able to do it himself, as one stalk is twice his size, and their roots are quite fibrous. But that’s exactly what he needs to make some string to tie the sticks together. 

For that part, Jaskier sits and watches him work, remembering with new understanding the times that he saw Geralt tear plants and flowers from along the roads. He would grind them sometimes and store the paste into leather pouches. Other times he’d have string in the morning to tie his hair with, seemingly materialized out of thin air.

“There,” Geralt announces loud enough for the gaggle of pixies to scramble near and see his wooden creation—a flat board that when pushed or kicked to deformation, reveals sharp stick ends coming towards the pushing force. “I’ll show you how to fix these on your doors. No bird or squirrel will bother you again with these traps.”

Each one takes a turn testing the trap door. Going by their animated bouncing around, they like it. 

The deeper-voiced pixie croaks something indecipherable to his ears, and a sixth member pops out of a root to pick up the contraption and take it away.

Jaskier taps his fingers together. “Is that all, um, kind pixies?”

 _“Not yet! Not yet!”_ They hum and coo around each other again, Jaskier unable to hear their whispering consultation. _“Follow! We have a friend! A friend in need!”_

“A friend in need?” He looks at Geralt to hear what he thinks, but Geralt just shrugs.

_“A friend in need! He keeps getting stuck in the trees.”_

“That...doesn’t sound good?” is all he thinks adequate to say. It’s not like they disclose anything about their friend. Like if they are another of their kind—the friend is a small raccoon—or how far they need to run to reach him—much too far in Jaskier’s opinion—or why their friend keeps getting stuck in trees—it’s a raccoon, it’s probably not stuck at all, might just not like the pixies all that much.

The raccoon screeches when it sees them. He’s definitely right about that last one.

_“Help our friend!_

“Well,” Jaskier hums flatly, “What do you think? Can you get up there? This tree’s shorter, but it’s still a big climb at the size you are now.” 

He glances down at the witcher sitting comfortably in the palm of his hand, little legs shifting slightly back and forth in suspension. It’s cute...with how Jaskier keeps his other hand against his little chest, like a blanket. And when Geralt returns an inquisitive look, the thoughtful frowning pulls a warm chuckle out of Jaskier. 

Then he opens his mouth and Jaskier is forced to remember that even shrunken down, it’s still _Geralt_ he’s carrying.

“Toss me at the branch.”

“I—” Jaskier shakes his head like a bristling bird, blinking like someone’s thrown a tankard of murky well water at his face. “I’m not going to _toss_ you, you ridiculous man. _I’ll_ climb. Just, let me free my hands. _‘Toss me’,_ I can’t believe...”

There’s a pocket in the inside of his doublet that might fit Geralt well enough, so he tries that for a change. Unbuttoning the first two slots with one hand is no trouble at all. He’s a master at it. Much less finesse goes into stashing the witcher in the confined space right above his heart. 

“Is that good?”

He startles at the feeling of Geralt wiggling around for space. “I won’t slip,” is shouted from the pocket, the words muffled but understood. “You sure you can climb?”

“Geralt, I’ve climbed a few trees in my life, both for fun and in order to escape for dear life. I’ll be fine.”

If he slips a tiny bit on his first step getting up on the tree, that’s none of Geralt’s concern. He climbs the rest just fine.

The raccoon, however, is _all_ of his concern. It hisses a threat when he’s an arm’s distance away. Luckily for it, Jaskier does not want to get bit. 

“Geralt,” he calls to his breast pocket, “I think it’s time to do your thing.”

More wiggling disturbs the doublet. “What’s ‘my thing’ mean here?”

“You know, the mind thing. Shake your fingers at it and tell it to go down.”

He hears the sigh closer to his ear. Twisting his neck he sees, unsurprisingly, that Geralt is climbing up the collar of his shirt, without a care that they are several feet off the ground and one slip would send him tumbling down. “You mean _Axii_ it.”

“Yes, yes. What are you doing?! Do it from the pocket!”

“I need to see it, and I need the room.” 

Despite his stuttering protests, the witcher claims his shoulder as battlegrounds, one of his hands fisted in the hair behind Jaskier’s ear—an unpleasant choice, but preferable to a freestanding pose.

A chill makes the hairs on his neck break out like gooseflesh. Geralt is making the sign.

“Go down. And stop getting stuck in trees.”

The raccoon dutifully starts moving off the high branch towards them. Jaskier cringes when it crosses his other shoulder on the way down. But it doesn’t bite him. That’s his one good takeaway of the situation.

It takes an embarrassing amount of time to get back on solid ground—Jaskier never said he had practice climbing _down_ trees—and the pixies are absolutely overjoyed, petting their little raccoon friend’s fur. 

“Can you turn him back now?” He thinks Geralt ought to have earned their forgiveness now. Gods, he’s so tired. New muscles ache. 

But the pixies, it seems, have more in store for them.

 _“Not yet! Not yet!”_ they cry suddenly in unison. The raccoon bristles like a cat being spooked. _“One last task the witcher must perform!”_

“One last task?” He looks from the excited pixies to the witcher perched on his shoulder. Once more, Geralt shrugs. Like him, he must be too tired to argue. “Well, if you promise. What is it?”

_“The bear! The bear keeps breaking through our sweet stacks!”_

_The bear,_ they say. Jaskier rubs his eyes. He can’t muster up an ounce of panic or trepidation anymore. After everything that’s happened in the night, a bear might as well happen.

Geralt agrees with his unspoken sentiment. “You promise this is the last thing I have to do to earn your forgiveness?”

 _“Of course, of course,”_ one of the pixies reassures. _“A promise made is a promise that must be kept.”_

He can’t speak for Geralt, but Jaskier chooses to believe them. The pixies have been fairly earnest in their speech, only laughing meanly when they first shrunk Geralt down. He does start to wonder what is it about magical beings and their rule of threes. He’d love to meet one that gets things done in twos or fours. Break the norm a little. But that’s beside the point. 

The point is following the pixies to their last destination. At least they are considerate enough to slow for Jaskier’s sluggish pace. They beg him to hurry up, but they don’t go too far ahead.

A road starts to reveal itself through large tree roots. They follow it down to a fork in the path, split by a thin tree with strange stuffed fabric high in its branches. Their sweet stash, he discerns.

Smack in the middle of the forked path is a bear.

Right. He _actually_ forgot—there’s supposed to be a _bear_ at the end of their pixie-led trot.

A tiny hand taps him on his ear. “Jaskier.”

“Uh...yeah?”

“I’m gonna need you to drop me.”

“Huh?”

The bear roars. 

Jaskier hightails out of there.

“For fuck’s sake,” squeaks the witcher as loud as his little lungs can. The bear does not like the running—it _alarmingly_ starts chasing after them. “Jaskier! Drop me! I can handle it!”

“Handle _what,_ exactly? It’s a bear the size of a—a _bear!_ A horse, I don’t know! And you’re smaller than a bottle of Toussaintois wine!”

The bear gains on them and there’s only so much sprinting Jaskier can do before his legs give out. He’s going to trip and kill them both. 

The pixies are doing their own scrambling around the forest floor, but at a speed the bear could only ever dream of reaching. Jaskier sees the error in trusting creatures known for mischief, a little too late.

Diving through the trees affords them some time and precious distance, but not enough to make much difference. His throat hurts from how fast he’s breathing. He feels the moment he starts pushing past his limit, as his sides prickle painfully. 

“Put me down!” Geralt shouts directly in his ear. He’s holding on surprisingly well by just the tuft of hair in his grip. “I can still handle it, alright?! Trust me!”

Jaskier knows it’s a stupid idea—a stupid, risky, undeniably dumb idea—but in the end, even with pixie magic hindering him, Geralt is the witcher in need of no one, and _he’s_ the bard in need of saving. 

“Gods—fine! But if you die I’ll be very angry with you!”

He halts midstep, practically falling on his hands and knees, and still despite his collapse, he spares a hand to catch Geralt from flying off his shoulder. He is capable of that much. 

The witcher hops down on his own from there, yelling for him to get out of the road, which, easier said than done when his limbs are turning into pudding. A couple feet is all he can manage to crawl.

“Geralt,” he heaves, something between a gasp and a choke, and before he can finish with a snappish rebuttal to being overestimated, the witcher unsheathes his needle-sized sword and jumps at the bear barreling towards them. 

In that moment, instinct and terror combine for a single precious second and Jaskier overcomes human limitations—he throws himself a foot in the air and flops onto a thorny bush—feels no pain on impact, even, for which he prays to the sweet goddess Melitele and her blessed, healing tits that she will at least grant him a quick and painless death should it be his time.

_“The witcher has steel! It puts a splinter in the bear’s paw!”_

_What?_

A hot-aired whine snorts dangerously close to his head, ruffling his hair. One last attempt to worm away fails and he ends up on his back, the bear poised a clawed swipe away from him. 

And on the side of its front paw is Geralt, dangling from the pommel of his sword half-sunk into the bear’s fur.

The bear _really_ doesn’t like that and tries to shake him violently off.

 _“No!_ Geralt—” 

Jaskier forgets fear, death and self-preservation in the face of Geralt's monumental struggle. He sits up as much as he can and screams bloody murder in the bear’s face. 

The bear startles, and after a second roars _back,_ like it’s a challenge. 

It cuts off as the little witcher pushes his sword deeper into its paw. 

The roar turns into a whine. That huge deadly mass of fur rears back and Geralt falls—Jaskier a terrified witness to it all—but he lands with an unharmed _‘oof’,_ sword clattering over a small rock beside him. 

Finally, the bear has had enough. It runs away, past the fork in the old road. Hopefully it won't return with family.

As peace falls on their corner of the woods, the pixies return to dance around the worn out witcher.

_“The witcher is successful! The bear has left our sweet grounds!”_

Jaskier slumps back to the ground. He would have liked to catch his breath first. 

“While, _krhm,_ I’m very happy your sweets will remain forever safe from a greedy bear’s swiping claws, will you please undo the spell you’ve cast on my friend, the witcher who you’ve seen generous to help you?”

They dance another circle around Geralt, who by now has got his legs under him and stares warily at the pixies. They gratefully stay their distance, though they pause in their circling to address the beaten bard.

_“Hmm, the witcher has proven his remorse, we think. Three tasks given, three tasks done. And he has allowed the human to aid in our given tasks.”_

Jaskier knits his eyebrows together. Oddly put, that last bit, but upon second consideration, he realizes Geralt _had_ asked for his help, in some form, with all the tasks. To get to higher ground, mostly. Take him place to place. Rip up grass. Nothing about it was remarkable, really.

But he knows that Geralt is as stubborn as people come, and to get him to admit to any help or any wrong is like pulling teeth. And still, he’d allowed Jaskier to help. 

Jaskier forces his elbows to cooperate and get him up to sitting again, to better squint at the limping pixie-sized witcher. 

The physical effort it takes is not rewarded kindly. His body throbs hot like one big skidmark. A fresh drop of blood dots the edge of his lips. There’s not a part of him that won’t ache in the morning. Helping Geralt had been its own _nightmare—_ and he’d do it again. 

He extends his hand, palm flat and open, for Geralt to climb onto. And Geralt _does,_ so naturally, so blindly, without questioning what for. 

Jaskier lifts him up to eye level. “Hey there, you,” he says softly. Little yellow eyes return his gaze with a hum.

It’s a selfish wish, but were he able to, Jaskier would tuck him into his breast pocket and keep him there, safe forever. Geralt would never cease to complain—of the smell and sweat and self-embarrassment—but the thought of being a barrier between the witcher and the bad that dogs his footsteps warms his chest like glowing embers.

“The bear didn’t beat you up too hard, did it?” the bard asks of him after the long trial that is standing up. 

Geralt scrunches his nose. A patch of dirt covers it, must be from when he fell. “Not too bad. I flew a few feet, surprisingly didn’t break anything. Guess being small has _some_ perks.”

Jaskier smiles. “I’d much prefer you back to your big and strong self.”

 _“The human is right,”_ the pixies declare in a chorus, and a big ball of cloudy glitter goes flying at him.

It explodes into dust, _again,_ this time with Jaskier close enough to choke on air. Suddenly his arms feel incredibly burdened. He struggles to stay on his feet.

When the dust clears, a normal-sized Geralt stares at him from a higher perch—higher, Jaskier believes, but upon second inspection he finds it’s that his arms are wound around Geralt’s middle, apparently hoisting the witcher up with all the might of his spine, being bowed by the newfound weight. Their faces are very much a hair’s width apart at the brought-upon change.

“Ach,” Jaskier eloquently spouts, red-faced, still holding onto the witcher for no reason other than his arms have locked into position, already grown used to the night’s quest to keep a much tinier Geralt from plummeting to the ground. 

Slowly, he bends his knees enough so Geralt’s feet touch the ground, and at the witcher’s answering grip on his forearms, Jaskier finally lets him go safely. 

“You’re—hm—stronger than you look,” the witcher contemplates strangely.

Jaskier frowns at him. “And you’re _lighter_ than you should be.” 

The curious, wide-eyed expression decorating Geralt's face trades places with a familiar sulk. A shame, he would have liked to figure that one out more, but Geralt sincerely does feel a tad light. If it were up to him, he would buy a nice big platter of meat and cheese at the next available inn, but that is also heavily dependent on his purse’s contents, and if Geralt will oblige to the offering.

Though, after this _exceptional_ Saovine night, he just might. Jaskier can only hope.

And it’s truly a whole night, as the sky begins to lighten in short notice. With dawn’s approach, the pixies scramble out of sight, shouting to each other about their stone stacks. One of the pixies, the deeper-voiced of the bunch, is kind enough to leave the bard a parting stone, for being such a good fellow. 

According to the little thing, humans almost always freak out at the sight of them—and Jaskier doesn’t blame those humans one bit, with the sorts of fright tales he’s heard. _“It has been so refreshing to speak to one of you humankind willing to listen,”_ it says, shortly before leaving him awarded with a precious stone for him to do with as he wants.

The stone is a deep royal blue sapphire. It’s worth more than Geralt’s last five contracts combined, or so the witcher artfully appraises. _Five whole contracts._

An impish grin splits Jaskier’s face. “I’m buying a banquet table’s worth of meat next evening.”

Geralt huffs into his bent arms. His voice faintly echoes beneath the dilapidated bridge just outside the dark wood. “Please don’t.”

They’ve hidden there for a nap, doubtlessly a terrible decision as Jaskier _will_ wake up feeling a thousandfold worse, but gods above, they need some sleep before they fetch a disappointed Roach from a stable barring them both entry. 

“Alright, alright. Half a table, but _you_ have to eat more than just a chicken sandwich.”

Geralt sighs across from him.

The bard smiles in victory. A sigh is not a no.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested, you can find me [@seventfics](https://seventfics.tumblr.com) on tumblr and [@the_sevent](https://twitter.com/the_sevent) on twitter.


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